


doctor, don't look me in the (eye)s

by blacksatinpointeshoes



Series: jon sims v the nhs [1]
Category: The Bright Sessions (Podcast), The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Autistic Jonathan Sims, Everything Hurts, Gen, Joan is a sectioned therapist, Jon Sims Needs Fucking Therapy Guys!!, Kind of canon-compliant, Monsters, Not A Fix-It, POV Joan Bright, Panic Attacks, Section 31, Therapy, Unfortunate Implications, because I say so, it was supposed to be... but it's not, jon is not quite human, like it could be, naps, set mid s3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-17 16:51:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18102539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blacksatinpointeshoes/pseuds/blacksatinpointeshoes
Summary: Joan Bright has a new patient. He's carrying an old tape recorder and is covered head to toe in scars. Jonathan Sims looks dangerous, but Dr Bright has dealt with all sorts of atypical individuals. She has no reason to be nervous.Right?





	doctor, don't look me in the (eye)s

**Author's Note:**

> hello hello! I made a shitpost on Tumblr; 2 days later I've written a full fic. c'est la vie. enjoy :)

The first thing Joan Bright notices about the man in her waiting room is the scars. The second thing she clocks is the tape recorder: old and worn, with a tired red button smooth from constant use. Joan smiles at him when she steps out of her office, holding out a hand in a gesture that could welcome either a handshake or a hug. “You must be Jonathan.”

Her newest patient goes for the handshake - it’s a tactic Joan uses to gage comfort level and emotional openness - and when their skin touches, she nearly recoils. The palm of Jonathan’s dominant hand, and much of its sides, are covered in third degree burns. They’ve long since healed into plasticy markings much unlike the circular ones that splatter his body, and Joan notices that her grip fits perfectly into the outline of the scar. 

She lets go. 

“It’s Jon, thank you,” he says, a little raspy, and Joan nods. 

“Of course,” she tells him, opening the door to her office and holding it wide. “I’m Dr Bright, as I’m sure you’ve discerned. Come on in.” 

“When did you get-” Jon starts, then abruptly cuts himself off as he steps inside, one hand slipping the tape recorder into his back pocket. Joan notices that it’s on, but she doesn’t mention it. She doesn’t mind. Besides, they’ll work up to that. 

“When did I get what?” Joan asks with a smile, sitting down in a comfortable armchair and gesturing for Jon to take a seat wherever he pleases; he deliberates, then picks a corner of the couch. Jon shakes his head, though, at her question, scanning the office and looking anywhere but at her face. 

“It doesn’t matter,” he says finally, and behind his eyes Joan can see his mind racing. She lets him take the time to familiarize himself with the area, watching him with a soft and unyielding gaze. 

He looks old. At first she thought he was older than most of her patients - mid forties, maybe, at first glance - but as she takes a proper look, Joan realizes she was wrong. He can’t be much older than Frank, or Mark, or… Damien. His hair is dark and threaded with gray, and there’s a permanent crease between his brows. That was what threw her. 

This assessment isn’t even accounting for the scars: the burns on his hand, what looks like a stab wound peeking out of his shirt collar, and the raised rings everywhere else. At first, Joan had assumed that the small round marks on his face and neck were remnants of teen acne, but Jon’s jumper sleeve is riding up his forearm as he picks at his jeans. There, Joan is privy to an assortment of circular scars: some barely noticeable, some large enough to be bullet wounds. Maybe they are.

Jon doesn’t look old, she concludes finally. He just looks tired. 

“Do you like the office?” Joan asks finally, deciding that it’s about time to break the silence. Jon looks to her. There’s something unsettling in his eyes. Joan Bright deals with atypicals every single day, dangerous ones, but this feels like something else entirely. 

“Oh - y-yes,” he says, and that feeling dissipates. “I’ve never done -  _ this -  _ before, so you’ll have to excuse me.” 

“It’s no problem,” Joan replies, settling back in her chair. “There’s no protocol. I’m here to listen to you, and to help you, Jon. That’s my job. There’s nothing that you should be worried about telling me. I know that for someone in your situation, things can be a bit… different, but your experience here should feel safe and honest whether or not we’re discussing your abilities. Now, you had a question earlier. What was it?”

Joan swears she can see Jon pale a little bit, and one finger circles a burnt knuckle as if wishing to fiddle with something else. The recorder, probably. Jon wets his bottom lip, then sighs. “You’re the one asking questions, Dr Bright,” he says carefully, voice thick and stiff. “It doesn’t… it doesn’t matter.” 

“Of course it matters,” Joan chides, folding her hands in her lap. Already she’s found what seems to be the first root of Jon’s anxiety - does he feel like he’s not worth listening to? Is he used to being ignored? Or does this have another meaning entirely, something less…  _ typical?  _ “Like I said, I’m here for you. If there’s any question holding you back, feel free to ask. I’m an open book.”

That’s not true. But it’s true for now. Jon keeps fidgeting.

“Jon?”

“I…” He sighs again, and it comes from deep within his chest. He’s a tall man - lean and long-limbed in a way that bespeaks a gangly childhood - and right now he’s hunched in on himself. “I said it doesn’t matter.”

“You’re not going to convince me,” Joan responds, kind but firm. “Let yourself be heard, Jon. It’s only a question. I’ll be okay, and so will you.”

Jon’s laugh is acrid and short, the sort of laugh that evokes memories of Mark at his most haunted, Sam at her most guilty, and Caleb at his most self-deprecating moments. Joan takes an internal pause, and thinks about marking ‘questions’ as a much larger potential stressor than she’d originally thought. 

Her patient still isn’t saying anything. “Jon?” she prods again, softly. 

“Yes. Yes, sorry, I…” He trails off almost immediately, hands twisting in his lap. “Can we-” And then just like before, Jon stops speaking. It’s abrupt. Annoyed, though that seems to be directed at himself. When Joan catches his eye again, they flash with genuine fear. “No, no, nevermind, I… nevermind.”

“Can you tell me what your question was?” Joan repeats once more, after a pause. Jon takes a steadying breath and nods, pinching his temple and pushing up his glasses. 

“I was wondering when you got sectioned,” he says, voice clipped. There’s an arrogance there now, a cocky self-assured smirk, and Joan doesn’t know whether he’s putting on a good farce or if that’s just what he’s like. She’s guessing the latter. “I didn’t know that Section 31 applied to any profession but police.” 

Joan notices that he didn’t phrase his response like a question, but she doesn’t comment. “I was sectioned a long time ago,” she answers calmly. Jon’s long fingers drum on the arm of the couch, ticking with nervous energy. “I was twenty, but really it should have happened earlier.” 

This is a familiar story, and Joan is used to telling it, but Jon seems nervous as she begins to narrate. “There was an incident with my family,” she continues easily, taking a deep breath as she settles in her chair. Jon only gets tenser, a taut thread inside him only moments away from breaking. “But it wasn’t such a surprise to me as it was to others. In some way I’d always known that some parts of the world were different. I -”

_ “No,  _ goddamnit, I don’t want your bloody statement!” Jon explodes, and his face is several shades paler than the warm brown of before. Joan stops speaking in a mixture of fear and confusion as Jon pushes himself up and away from the couch, shaking like a leaf as he makes for the door. “I don’t - don’t continue;  _ don’t continue-” _

“Jon!” she calls after him, crossing the room in an instant to block the door. Joan’s mind is racing with possibility and atypical classification and diagnosis when she meets his shining eyes and is stopped cold. “Jon, look at me,” she continues, fully in  _ Dr Bright _ mode. “Focus on me. You need a focal point, and I’m right here. Listen to my voice, okay? We’re going to calm you down.”

He reminds her of Sam, now, this well dressed Brit in her office who looks  _ nothing  _ like Joan’s tiny American time-traveller, but that look on both of their faces, so stricken with panic? That’s the same. There’s no mistaking that type of fear, one that can’t be fixed by vanquishing the bad guy and going home at the end of the day; no, this is just Jon and his mind, and things aren’t going great. “Jon,” she says again, “look at me.”

Jon looks. His gaze comes to rest just past her face; the rise and fall of his chest is still a bit too shuddery to pass as normal. “Look at me,” she instructs again, quieter now. “Then left. No - not with your neck, with just your eyes, look left. That’s good. Now up, just the eyes, and then right. That’s it. Just the eyes. Now left again. Good. That’s really good, Jon. Up again.”

It’s a strategy Joan has been using for years. It helped her first, in grad school, when the pressure of academics felt like it would make her heart burst. Then, she started working with patients, an she passed down the trick like a family heirloom. Joan keeps talking, low and soothing, and Jon returns to his body. 

Joan puts her hand on his shoulder, both a grounding motion and a comfort. “I won’t force you to do anything,” she begins softly, “but it would be helpful if you let me know your particular issue with asking questions, Jon. This is clearly causing a lot of anxiety, and I want to help. Does it have anything to do with your… abilities?” 

At that, his face twists into an expression of pure disgust and Jon pulls away, bracing one still-shaking hand on the arm of the couch. “Dr. Bright, surely you’ve treated enough monsters to know that I’m no different-”

“Stop that,” Joan interrupts, her heart leaping into her chest. “You’re not a monster, Jon, and neither are any of my patients.” 

He laughs at that, bitter and inevitable. “It’s not particularly — self-deprecating, or of that ilk, it’s just — true.” 

“You’re not a monster,” she repeats, tone as stubborn as rock. “And you’re not allowed to use that sort of terminology in my office, do you understand?” Jon says nothing, just sits back down on the couch with the weight of eons pressing his shoulders into a slump. “Do you  _ understand?”  _

Jon drags a hand over his face and nods; Joan isn’t convinced. “I’m going to ask you to do something for me,” Joan says as she sits across from him again. “Alright?”

His assent is a weary, “Of course.” 

“Look at me,” Joan begins patiently. “Jon, look at me, please.” Finally he does, and she clears her throat. “‘I am not a monster.’”

Jon groans outright, pointedly looking away. “Dr Bright, I — I appreciate the idea, but-”

“Say it,” Joan cuts in before he can truly start to stammer out his protests. “There is a value in speaking things out loud, Jon; look at me and say it. ‘I am not a monster.’”

“I -” Jon sighs again, running a hand through his hair and ruffling a patch of white towards the back. “Dr Bright, I…” 

“I don’t want to press you, but this is important,” Joan says, her eyes sweeping over him. “You might not believe it today, but we can work on that. Saying it out loud is a start.”

But Jon’s lips remain firmly shut, pressed into a hard line, and he just shakes his head. “There’s no point in deluding myself,” he says, firm in a way that horrifies Joan. “I don’t call myself a monster as an insult; I say it because I  _ am.  _ Or will be. I - I don’t know, it doesn’t…” His eyelids close for a moment too long and he sighs that bone-tired sigh again. “It doesn’t matter.”

Jon covers his mouth to stifle a yawn, looking completely wiped out. Dropping the subject, Joan nods and simply says, “We’ll work on that next time.” She’s met with no protest, which is progress, she supposes. 

“Okay,” says Jon, standing to go. “Well. Thank you.” 

“Wait.” Something about the look in his eye, the curve of his shoulders, makes Joan weary. Instinct says that he’s not safe, that something will happen if he walks out of her office right now. She can’t be certain that she’s right, but she’s worried, and Joan has good instincts. 

Jon stops.  “Yes?”

“You’re welcome to stay here for a while,” Joan offers, gesturing to the office. “You’re my last appointment of the day, and I’ll be alone in here for a while. I’ve been told by many patients that the couch is comfortable, if you want to lie down. This can be an exhausting process.”

A look passes between them, and Jon nods. “I… have to do something first,” he says, looking almost embarrassed. “It’s from work. You don’t mind if I - that is, is it alright if I-” Frustration stops him short and Jon pauses, slipping his hand into his back pocket and taking out the recorder. 

“You can use the waiting room,” Joan tells him gently, and Jon nods. There’s relief in his expression, mingling with the tired and the lonely, and Joan nods back. 

She leads him outside, and Jon pulls a crumpled up paper from his pocket. There’s something almost ritual in the way he smooths it, taking a deep breath and settling it on his lap. He sets the recorder on one knee and presses play. Joan shuts the door to her office just as he begins to speak, and she swears she catches the words, “Statement begins.” 

The process takes Jon about twenty minutes, and he slips noiselessly into Joan’s office afterwards. He looks blank and even more tired than before, if that’s possible. He’s still clutching the tape recorder as he sits down on the couch without so much as acknowledging Joan. 

She twists around in her desk chair to ask how his work thing went, but… he’s already asleep upright. He’s clearly out cold: grip on the tape recorder slackening, head dropped to his chest, breaths coming in a slow, steady rhythm. 

Joan is certain she made the right call. 

She turns back to her computer, writing up a new file for Jon and updating some notes on her other patients. It’s typical, monotonous work, interrupted only by the occasional mumble from the couch. The sun sinks low in the sky. Joan feels her eyelids droop. She’ll need to go home soon, but she’s loathe to wake the delicate figure in such a rare moment of peace. 

“-hh _ hah!”  _

Joan’s debate is resolved for her with a sudden flurry of sound and movement; she whips herself towards a now very awake Jonathan Sims. He’s rattled. Bleary. Disoriented. Everything one would expect from a man just shaken out of a nightmare. Joan opens her mouth to offer comfort, but when they lock eyes, the words die on her lips.

Joan Bright is certain she’s being watched. Of course she is - Jon is looking at her - but there’s something more to it. There’s an uncomfortable omniscience in his face that stretches far beyond the tiny office. She feels eerily as though his eyes have multiplied, a laser-fine gaze sweeping across her shoulders and recording every part of her being. Joan feels stripped of more than her body, as if Jon’s sleep laden eyes are cutting straight through her skin and scooping out her history. 

She feels known. She feels knowledgeable. She feels full. She feels ignorant. She feels empty. She feels invaded. She thinks - without any way of controlling or stopping the notion -  _ monster,  _ and with equal unwillingness, she’s certain that Jon knows that awful thought. 

Jon blinks, and the world comes rushing back. “I…” he begins, an apology forming on his lips. Joan is sure that her fear must show, at least a little bit. He picks up on it too, and shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I should go.” 

He’s out of the office before Joan can even think to protest. 

* * *

Jon had scheduled two appointments, but he doesn’t show for the second one a few weeks later. Joan can’t be certain that she expected him to. If she’s honest with herself, she was afraid of what would happen if she saw him again.

A woman named Georgie calls to cancel, though, explaining that Jon’s in the hospital, that it’s serious, and that they’re not quite sure what’s going to happen in the long run. Joan offers her sympathy. 

“I hope he gets better,” she says, playing with a pencil on her desk.

Georgie hangs up. 

**Author's Note:**

> as always, comments and kudos are so deeply appreciated - and if you'd like to chat, hit me up on my Tumblr, @thoughtsbubble. thank you for reading!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] doctor, don't look me in the (eye)s](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20638250) by [GoLBPodfics (GodOfLaundryBaskets)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GodOfLaundryBaskets/pseuds/GoLBPodfics)




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